Child Labor in the Southern Textile Mill

Walter J. Hursey

ABSTRACT:  The 1880’s saw the rise of the Southern textile industry.  One of the primary factors that propelled the Southern textile industry to eventual domination of the New England textile industry, was its use of child labor.  It did not take long for accusations of child exploitation and abuse to come forward.  But were the children exploited by greedy mill owners as accusations state?  Research for this project challenges the standard narrative that the textile industry exploited child labor for the financial gain of the industry and present research that indicates this issue was much more complicated.

When the first modern Southern textile mills began operations, they hired their work force from the rural areas.  These Southern mills became very successful almost immediately, and it did not take long before they received criticisms of the employment of the whole family, including children.  Early critics, often progressive activists and labor organizers opposed child labor, complaining that Southern industrial greed forced or pushed children into labor.  Early and later academics also echoed those accusations through numerous articles, books and other publications.  Southern industries were derided as evil and greedy men who took advantage of children.  Many of these claims said Southern mill owners deprived child workers of their youth, health, and education.  As one doctor stated, if Southern child labor came to an end, it would reduce tuberculosis, alcoholism and mental disorders.[1]

There is evidence though that indicates that those who criticized the use of children did it for political, business or personal reasons.  Many sources explain that calls opposing child labor had very little to do with protecting children.  Accusations by Southerners explained that the Northern concern over Southern child labor was due to the fact that Northern textile mills could not economically compete against the cheap labor advantage the South possessed. 

Several others present another option, that it was the parents of the children who wanted their children to work in the mills.  Phillip Holleran provides examples of what he calls a “push/pull” idea in his article, Family Income and Child Labor in Carolina Cotton Mills.  Holleran contends that mills may not have “pushed” children into mill labor, but the parents actually “pulled” their children into mill work to improve the economic conditions of the family unit.[2] 

This is an important question today, because many academic publications depict the mills as child exploiters with very little evidence to support their claims.  This paper will examine numerous factors to determine the motivations and causes behind the South’s use of child labor. Through the research presented in this paper, it will be challenged that the past critics of Southern use of child labor were in fact incorrect and that there were other causes besides industrialist greed.

Over the last one hundred and thirty plus years, there have been many critics who have stated that the use of child labor in Southern textile industries was based on greed.  One early work, "The Hoe-Man in the Making: The Child at the Looms," (1906) expressed outrage at the use of children in the textile mills.  This work by Edwin Markham, social justice advocate, claimed that children were employed in the textile industry due to the greed of factory owners.  Markham explained that in the mills, the children were found as “a gaunt army of children keeping their forced march on the factory-floors — an army that outwatches the sun by day and the stars by night”.  Markham further explained that these children were stripped from their mountain homes to work alongside the factory machines.[3]  Despite his claims, Markham offers no information to directly support his claim. 

Markham was not the only social activist against child labor.  Another activist, Lewis Hine also argued against child labor through his writing and photography.  Employed by the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), he traveled the country investigating working conditions of women and children in factories and mines between 1908 to 1918.  His photographs were used by the NCLC and in newspapers and magazines to raise social consciousness of child labor.  Later, Thomas Dawley will follow in Hine’s footsteps photographing the same places but offering a counter argument to Hines message and photographs.[4]    

While Hine’s photographs presented visual arguments against child labor, they only told what could be seen, not heard.  The children were not interviewed and appear as if they were posed to present an intended appearance.  When the photos were published, they were presented with captions explaining the names of the children, where they worked and their ages, but not their reasons for working in the mills in the first place.  According to George Dimock, “What does not get considered within this framework, is the possibility that the family’s presence in the mills represents a rational choice admitting of no better alternative given the structural realities of their historical circumstances.  Dimock continues by explaining that while social reform organizations like the NCLC opposed child labor, they offered no corrective actions to change the situations that pushed the mill laborers to seek out employment within the textile industries in the first place.[5]  This is the overall problem with many of the arguments against child labor.  The reformers or academics that opposed child labor did not offer an alternative solution for the poor to rise out of their extreme poverty.  Even Hine stated in an article, that if poverty, consumption of alcohol, decent housing and wages could not be improved upon, at least they could prevent child labor.  What is ironic in this statement by Hine’s, is that the textile mill village did just that.  It provided decent housing, reduced poverty, practiced temperance, and provided better wages than what the mill workers had before they came to the mills.[6]  One  testimonial statement from a mill operative stated that they were financially better off than when they lived in the mountains.[7]    

Later, Elizabeth Huey Davidson’s “Early Development of Public Opinion Against Southern Child Labor” (1937) presented a similar claim.  Her source stated that it was the greed on the part of the industrialist that allowed child labor.  She specifically said that reformers saw child labor as the greed of the capitalists.  Further explaining that the industrialists hid reasons for child labor behind invalid excuses, such as that “the labor they provided financially helped the children”, but her paper offers only speculation.[8]  Davidson followed up her work on child labor that expanded her work into a book in 1939, titled Davidson, Elizabeth H. Child Labor Legislation in the Southern Textile States.[9] 

Walter Trattner also addressed the early use of child labor in his 1969 article, The First Federal Child Labor Law (1916).  Trattner began his article by indicating during the later 19th century, the use of child labor by the textile industry was like the industrial exploitation of the environment.  Trattner continued that to create change in child labor, laws were required to deliver the needed change.  What Trattner’s work does not consider is that for the early workers, their children working in the mills was no different than when they worked on the farms that they just left.  This simple explanation for child labor is often overlooked by many historians and sociologists; work was work to many of the mill people, regardless of where it was performed.  Trattner furthered his work in child labor history with his book, Crusade for the Children: A History of the National Child Labor Committee (1970).   

What Trattner, Davidson and Markham miss, is that while they position child labor in the negative context of greed and exploitation, it was normal for children to work in labor alongside their parents.  To the parents of these child workers, there was no difference in children working on the farm or in the mills.  An 1898 article explained the normalcy of child labor in comparison in the farm to the mill.  Reverend Roper viewed both children who worked on the farm and those that worked in the mill.  After looking at both, Roper asked the question, what do you do with the thousands or children who cannot find work on the farm, but need to feed themselves?  The mill was the only answer for them.  Roper continued by explaining that he saw no more of a problem for children working within the mill than on a farm.  Furthermore, he explained that for the mill children, they had a social advantage over farm children with their close proximity to a community as well as the ability to attend school.[10]  Roper’s article explains that it was not exploitation, but the simple answer of the normalcy for children to work.

Southern labor historian, Jacquelyn Down Hall, in her 1986 publication, “Cotton Mill People: Work, Community, and Protest in the Textile South, 1880-1940”, presented the same argument.  Hall stated that mill owners exploited the labor of their workers, without any interest in bettering their lives.[11]  Hall continued by stating that mill owners exploited the family labor system that was familiar on the farm, while promoting mill work as a refuge against poverty.[12]  

As Thomas Cartledge explains in his Recollections: Life in South Carolina Mill Villages, published in 2019, that the “textile mills easily exploited the abundant supply of relatively low-wage labor as workers drifted from agriculture to industry”.  Cartledge states that families were “lured” to the mills, because they saw it as a way to keep their families together.  He continued that Southern mill factories heavily relied on child labor.[13]  While Cartledge’s publication presents child labor negatively, his work contained a testimony from a former child textile worker that stated they had worked as a child in the mills, but then their parents moved back to the country.  Once they were old enough, he and his sister returned to mill work.[14]  If these children felt that they were exploited, why would they return back to the mill the first opportunity they had?

When the first antebellum mills began, they were small operations producing low quality textiles for local markets.  They were not a threat to the state-of-the-art New England textile mills.  Most equipment used by Southern textile mills was outdated used machinery bought from New England or British mills.  If a mill wanted to compete against the New England mills, they needed to invest in the latest in state-of-the-art equipment, which is not where the antebellum South was.[15]  H.P Hammett further supported this claim stating that in order for mills to be successful, they needed to invest in the newest equipment.[16]

Due to this technological disadvantage, many Southerners realized the need to change.  In 1849 South Carolina Governor James H. Hammond reiterated the need of change when he stated that “Those nations only are powerful and wealthy, which in additional to agriculture, devote themselves to commerce and manufactures”.[17]  Southerners began seeing that the South should no longer remain a “colonial economy” of Northern industries and should strike out on their own. 

South Carolinian William Gregg argued for this change four years before Hammond’s statement.  In 1845, he wrote a series of essays that argued that the South was better positioned than New England to produce textiles.  In his essays, Gregg listed the advantages the South had over the North, that included cheap land, close locality of the raw cotton, sufficient sources of waterpower and most importantly, large quantities of cheap labor.[18]  Another writer echoed Gregg’s ideas stating that the most important asset the South had was its people.  “Our operatives are admitted to be remarkably frugal, industrious, and easily taught and controlled”.  Furthermore, the people were willing to work for lower wages than in the North and they could be easily taught the textile trade and not go on strike.[19]  The low wages and refusal to go on strike were some of the most important features of Southern laborer during this time, as the North faced higher wages and readily willing strike when they believed they needed.  

When Gregg initially wrote his essays, he argued for slave labor, but once he began his Graniteville mill during in the 1850’s, he hired “Poor Whites” as laborers.  His initial motive for slave labor was mill labor required training and skills, which required mill investment.[20]  Gregg saw in the New England mills, once trained, white labor sometimes left mills with skills the mills gave them; trained slave labor could not leave.  Eventually Gregg changed his mind, believing that poor whites should not be passed over for slave labor.  He said that Southern poor whites who were in destitute condition near starvation, needed labor that could lift them out of their situation.  He viewed the Southern textile industry as a salvation for the poor whites of South Carolina.[21]  It would be three decades before Gregg’s essays were tested.

After the Civil War, many Southerners looked to Gregg’s ideas as a way to recover economically in a new labor system based on free labor.[22]  They began investing in their own industries to create economies based on industry.  One of the earliest men to follow Gregg’s advice was H.P Hammett, who built Piedmont Manufacturing Company, in Piedmont, South Carolina in 1876.  The mill started out with one hundred workers that were brought from the Appalachian Mountains, like many mills will do later.  The mill proved to be an instant success and by 1880 had grown to three hundred workers, and a decade later expanded to over 1,300 laborers by 1890, with a town population of three thousand people.[23] 

Unlike Northern mills, Hammett’s and most Southern mills hired labor as family units, including the children.  The primary Southern states that used child labor were North and South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia, with Georgia relying the least on child labor.[24]  While these Southern mills differed from Northern mill in their reliance on child labor, they also had an unusual relationship with their employees compared to Northern mills.  Northern employees were treated as part of the large factory machine, while Southern employees were treated as individuals.[25]  The relationship of Southern mills extended to the whole family, not just with the individual employee.  This example of the paternalistic management style of Southern mill owners where “recruitment and development of employees involved a complex interrelationship and process of adjustment”.[26]  The mill owners often saw themselves as parents and protectors of their employees, including the children. 

Very soon after the Southern mills went into operation though, critics and complaints arose about the use of child labor.  The two primary antagonists of Southern child labor were New England textile mills and Northern labor organizers.  In an article published in 1900, it was explained that the idea to stop child labor in Southern mills began in New England, that spread the cause to Northern humanitarians who then passed it on to Southern Christians.[27]  Why this happened was that New England mills were losing business to the new Southern textile industry, of the South’s cheap labor.  As David Koistinen explained, the South possessed an available and pliant labor force that was cheaper than Northern labor.[28]  Any legislation that prohibited or limited the use of child labor in the South would put New England mills on a competitive playing field.  As the South paid lower wages than Northern mills, Northern investors and mill owners began moving their businesses South.[29] 

At this time, the only concern for child labor in the South mostly appeared within union publications that were only preaching to their members.[30]  Northern unions saw the South’s use of child labor as problematic for their cause.  It was difficult for Northern unions to maintain “fair” wages for their union members when the South paid lower wages that resulted in Northern industry moving South.  It was stated in an 1885 article that, “Laboring men should see that the economic operation of child labor is always to compete with and cheapen adult labor”.[31]  Another source by opponents of child labor, argued that the addition of child labor into the labor market lowered the overall wages of the labor market, which resulted in unemployment and poverty. [32]  If children were prevented from participating in the labor, then average wages would remain higher, and would prevent the family’s need for their children work in the mill for additional family income in the first place.[33]  While unions thrived in the North, the South had very little problems with organized labor.  A New Orlean’s labor organizer stated that Southern “mill operatives are too illiterate and transient” to organize their labor.  He further explained that compulsory education laws throughout the South would help the interests of labor.[34] 

When the issue of child labor first appeared, most Southerners were not taking a side in the newspapers, but at the turn of the twentieth century it was quickly becoming an issue.  In an article published in 1900, it explained that the idea to stop child labor in Southern mills began in New England, which began by spreading the cause to Northern humanitarians who passed it on to Southern Christians.[35]  Union organizer Samuel Gompers saw child labor as a direct threat to adult wages, but he could not respond to the issue through political means or messaging. The South saw organized labor as a threat and as a result, Gompers enlisted the help of Irene Ashby who went to Alabama and addressed child labor.  She did not attack the threat to Northern wages but appealed to the humanity of child labor and the connection that if children are working then they are not in school.  While this sounds reasonable, Ashby added more to the argument.  She explained to her Southern audiences that while the poor white child labors in the mills, the black children were in school receiving an education.  This had the intended impact that Ashby and Gompers hoped for, making the message about race and education.[36] 

As a result of the negative publicity, legislation was put forth in the South Carolina Senate to enact laws against child labor in February 1900.  While the bill failed to pass, it demonstrated the growing political involvement against child labor.[37]  With the building negative publicity and politics of Southern Child labor and accusations of industrial greed, the United States Bureau of Labor began an investigation into child labor.  As a result, in 1907 Thomas Dawley was assigned to investigate several Southern textile mills to determine if child workers were exploited for their labor.  After interviewing various people within the textile mill villages and rural areas where these workers had migrated from, Dawley returned to Washington D.C. with his findings.  According to Dawley, his findings were thrown out by the United States Bureau of Labor, because his findings did not support the intended political narrative. Dawley’s report revealed that children working in the textile mills had a better life than their rural counterparts and the children chose to work in the mills.  Although his initial report was thrown out, in 1912 Dawley self-published his report.  In the publication, “The Child that Toileth Not, The Story of a Government Investigation that Was Suppressed”[sic], Dawley said that the textile mills and the work it provided to children positively impacted the lives of the children and their families and that children worked in the mills by the families’ choice.[38]    

While Dawley’s report demonstrated that it was the parents who chose for their children to work in the mills, many others would state the same.  An article before Dawley’s book titled “The Georgia Cracker in the Cotton Mills” by mill village school teacher, Clare de Graffenried blamed the parents.  She explained that the parents either forced or tricked the mill owners into hiring their children.[39]  Furthermore, newspaper writer and child labor activist, N.G. Gonzales also laid the fault at the parent’s feet, when he explained that mill parents were the major obstacle in the goal of integrating the mill workers into the “new order” (progressive movement).  Gonzales continued by explaining that progressives were not looking to parents who were accustomed to their children as laborers that contributed to the family earnings.  They were looking for laborers who would stand against child labor and support the progressive movement.[40] 

While children worked in various Southern industries, the majority worked in the textile mills.[41]  In 1899, one-fourth of all workers (25,000) in the Southern textile factories were under the age of sixteen.[42]   By 1904, child labor in the mills stood over 50,000, with 20,000 of them under twelve years of age; a child was considered any person under 16 years of age.[43]  This labor was almost exclusively white too.  There was an implied agreement between the Southern mill owners and the planter class to leave black labor available for the planter class.[44] 

Furthermore, early historians have written that mill owners through “altruistic” motives also believed that when they hired children as laborers, they protected the children from the troubles that idleness could lead to.  Which brought to question, “what would happen to the children if they had all the free time on their hands?[45]  This question would have struck a chord with Christian ideas of the idle hands leading to bad choices, which was a common claim amongst supporters of Southern child labor.[46]

While it was believed that the mill owners hired children for profit, there is a different reason why many mill owners hired children.  There was a financial gain in hiring a child, but it was not because of lower wages.  Many mill owners found that children made better employees than their parents did.  Lewis Parker explained that when families came from rural areas, the father that spent his life as a farmer, was difficult to train in the mill trade, but his children were able to learn the trade sufficiently and eventually became experts in textile mill operations.[47]

Another reason Southern mill turned to child labor, was that the South lacked immigrant labor, unlike the North. [48]  When Northern textile mills first began in Lowell, Massachusetts in the early nineteenth century, the first employees were young single women from the local rural area.[49]  By the 1840’s this changed to immigrant labor throughout the New England States.[50]  First it was Irish and English immigrants, but later of through the 19th century, mill jobs were filled with Canadian, Polish, Greek and Portuguese.[51]  After the Civil War though, Southern industrialists turned to their own native labor force, instead of bringing in Northern of immigrant labor.[52]  Additionally, Southern labor was considered easier and docile to mill owner’s demands.[53] 

So, if the mill owners did not force children into the mill, why did they go to work in the first place?  An early newspaper article published in 1890 explained child labor was the product of the greed of the parents.[54]  Later labor activists would contend that if the parents were paid a fair wage, they never would have pulled their children into the mills in the first place.  As Holleran confirms, many turn-of-the-century social reformers held this belief that the parent’s low wages forced them to pull their children into mill work.  Edith Abbott stated that child labor was the direct consequence of the lack of the man’s earnings.[55]  Elyce Rotell and George Alter additionally stated that “children of working age were an important resource for families, but families had discretion over when to send their children into the labor force and many clearly exercised this discretion.”[56] 

Holleran counters these accusations by explaining that while there were studies conducted to produced results to indicate that the higher the wages of the parent, resulted in the likelihood that children would not work in the mill.  But Holleran explains that these studies were flawed, lacking important factors of child labor.  The first aspect is that the studies did not provide the child wages as a determining factor of the labor supply.  Further, the studies also showed how many children worked in the mills, but not the amount of labor they provided.[57] 

Holleran explored this complicated argument in his article, Family Income and Child Labor in Carolina Cotton Mills.  He explained that while many sociologists, economists and labor historians accused mills of exploiting child labor, Holleran offered both sides of the argument.  He explains that this is a “push” or “pull” concept.  The “push” idea is that if the textile mills had paid parental employees sufficient wages, the parents would not have been forced to send their children to the mill as laborers.  This “push” argument continued by explaining that mill owners created child labor situations with low wages and housing size requirements based on the number of family members who worked in the mill.  As a result, this “pushed” parents to send their children to the mill. 

The “pull” argument also offered by Holleran, is that the parents in their attempts to acquire larger housing and bigger family incomes decided by their own choice that their children should skip school and go to work in the mill.[58]  Copeland supports Holleran’s idea that parents pulled their own children into mill work.  He explained that in the New England mills, “foreigners” wanted to bring their children in to work, while in the South, the mill owners had to meet the requests that the mill hire all family members if the mill wanted the adult laborers.  Copeland criticizes these parents stating that their ignorance made it difficult for legislation against child labor.  He further elaborates that the parents who chose to put their children to work in the mills failed to understand that the laws they stood against were intended to protect their children.  Copeland additionally explained that the mill owners over time, realized that they gained very little in employing children.[59]  Another source from a 1905 interview of a union organizer that also supports Holleran’s “pull” theory, explaining that mill families deceived mill owners into hiring their children, and if the mill owners refused, the family moved on to a mill that will hire the entire family.[60] 

In a justification of child labor, Walter Trattner explained in Crusade for the Children: A History of the National Child Labor Committee and Child Labor Reform in America, that from the beginning of time, children have always labored.  As hunter gatherer societies, children helped with the hunting and fishing.  When these people settled down as family units in early civilization, children helped by working the family farms.  In places like Europe, where the guild system existed, children went into the trades at young ages.[61]  Throughout history of family agrarian labor, children as young as five participated in labor.  Children have always been expected to help with the chores of feeding chickens, planting crops and whatever labor that they could do on the farm.  It was just a matter of economics; more hands equaled increased labor, which in turn increased production on farms.[62]

Mill owners also explained that they were often forced into hiring the whole family, even though they did not like hiring children.  Their reason they hired the whole family, was that if the mill owner did not hire the whole family, then the family would move to another mill that would.  Mill owners further explained that if their state enacted legislation against child labor, mill families would move to another state that would allow the employment of their children.  This would only result in the state losing labor to states that had lesser restrictions on child labor. [63] 

While parents may not have believed there was harm in putting their children to work, parents remembered the poverty and hunger they felt before they had come to the mill.  So, while they may have been poor in the mill, they were housed and fed.  It was difficult for opponents of child labor to argue against this point, leaving them with the only argument against child labor, was that it was harmful to the children. [64] 

Legislation against child labor was not a new subject, just a new subject in developing American industries.  As early as 1833, the British passed the Factory Act of 1833.  This law prohibited children under nine from working in the textile mills and limited children ages thirteen through seventeen from working more than twelve per day.[65]  It also limited the amount of hours children could work.[66]  Similar laws were passed a few decades later in New England.

Thomas Copeland explains the results of New England’s abolition of child labor in the mills.  Copeland explained that when the North was abolishing its use of child labor, the South was increasing its dependency.  This Northern decrease resulted from Northern legislation against child labor.[67]  In Elizabeth Davidson’s Early Development of Public Opinion Against Southern Child Labor, she explained that child labor reform was part of the larger reform movements taking place during the late 19th century.  These reform movements included women’s rights, prohibition and child labor.[68] This legislation that regulated child labor in New England mills was almost non-existent in the South.[69]  When laws were enacted in New England, mill owners saw the Northern legislation as “hostile” and favored Southern mills. 

Even within newspapers, early Southern media would not take a side on the issue of child labor at that point.[70]  When labor legislation did begin in the South, it did not happen fast enough for the North though.  As one mill owner from Massachusetts stated, “What do I care if between the time legislation reaches the southern mills and the present time, my business is ruined.[71]  Laws regulating labor hurt Northern mills and their ability to remain economically competitive with Southern mills.  New England mills felt that Northern laws treated them unfairly as they saw profits evaporate, they began moving south in the 1890’s.[72]  Over the next thirty years the biggest textile companies relocated all or most of their mills to southern states.[73] 

When laws were initially enacted to restrict children in Southern textile industries, many had exemptions that allowed children under twelve to work in the mills.  Certificates could be issued to children less than 12 years old that needed work to support themselves.  Piedmont Manufacturing Company in 1907 had 15 boys and 7 girls under 12 with certificates to work.[74]  By 1910, there were calls for these exemptions to be removed due to abuses in the system.[75] 

While there were arguments for labor legislation, there were arguments against it.  In 1910, some of the most prominent textile mill owners went in front of the South Carolina senate to argue against restrictions on child labor.[76]  D.A. Tompkins, a builder and promoter of North Carolinian textile mills himself argued against legislation that prohibited child labor and legislation would do nothing to improve the lives of mill working children.  Tompkins further stated that many of the children who worked in the mill did so because of lazy fathers who would not work to provide for their family.  Any legislation that restricted child labor only harmed the child trying to provide for themselves and their families.  While Tomkins argued against legislation, he felt legislation for the protection and children should be between the employer and the workers who are familiar with the subject, not the activists and labor organizers.[77]  

Furthermore, many parents were against restrictions on child labor.  In an interview, a mother stated that she was against any laws that would prevent her children from working.  Another parent explained with a response shared by many mill workers, that there should be no laws restricting child labor; the rules should be left to the parents alone.[78]  The issue of whether a child worked in the mills was believed to be the responsibility of the parents, not something that should fall under the concern of the government.  This belief stemmed from the fact that before working in the mill, mill employees were farmers that saw no difference between children working on a farm for the family or working in the mill for the same family.   They believed as parents, they possessed the right to determine if their children worked, and any legislation against child labor was viewed as an infringement on the freedom of the parents over their children.  And while it was argued by progressives that children should be in school, rather than in the mill, education was not a priority for mill parents.[79] 

The people of the also South felt that the concerns over child labor were due mostly to Northern interference, which was only compounded by the fact that there were still the lasting wounds of the Civil War and Reconstruction.[80]  Southern laborers would not submit to state leaders, nor unions, which resulted in fewer demands for protective legislation.[81]  While mill owners were requested by the parents to allow their children to work, the reformers painted a picture of the lazy father who forced his children to work in the mills so he could live from their labor.  Reformers saw legislation as a way to protect children from the lazy parents.[82] 

Despite efforts to eliminate children from working in the textile industry, it would not be until 1938 that federal legislation banned or restricted child labor nationally.  While it was not the normal practice by the 1920’s and 1930’s for children to work in the mill, a school journal by Andrew Scott showed that child labor within the mills was still in practice by 1925.  Scott explained in his journal that at fourteen years old, he worked ten-hour shifts in the weave room at the Piedmont Manufacturing Company.  Scott further expressed that he liked his work very much.[83]  While child labor opponents presented child labor as forced on the children, Scott’s journal writings, as well as other examples provided with this paper, indicate the opposite; children worked in the mill by their own choice and enjoyed the work.  Scott’s journal, while only a few pages, does not mention that his labor was forced, nor exploitative.

By 1931, all Southern states prohibited labor to children under fourteen years, and in 1938 this standard became national law with the Fair Labor Standards Act.[84]  While this was hailed as an achievement by labor activists and academics, the majority of most textile mills were predominately made of male workers by then.  This was not due to legislation, nor changes in the social consciousness, but because of changes in textile machinery.  As machinery advanced, it required more strength and experience to operate.[85]  These changes resulted in the reduction or total elimination of women and child within the textile industry.

While labor, social activists and academics from the rise of Southern mill industry until present time criticized the use of children in mill labor, no information within the research examined for this project supported their claims.  They accused textile industrialists of greed and exploitation but in no publication reviewed for this research was evidence examined that supported these accusations.  While this paper will not deny that there could have been industrialists who were greedy or exploitative of their workforce, research did not reveal any sources to substantiate those claims.

What research presented in this paper did indicate was that child labor was a result of multiple issues.  These issues ranged from parental belief in the acceptance of children participating in labor for the economic benefit of the family; parental rights; traditional roles of children’s labor on the farm as no different than their labor in the mill; and the fact that children should not be idle.  Furthermore, research also indicated that while mill workers were not a highly paid workforce, the labor that they and their child earned did in fact improve their overall lives.  Their salaries also provided them with a quality of life better than where they came from.  As one mill owner stated, the jobs they provided served as welfare for people that would have otherwise starved to death.[86]

While many academics and activist passed judgement of this period’s dependence on child labor, research additionally indicated the motivations that denounced child labor in the first place, had nothing to do with the humanitarian cause to better the life of children.  What research showed was that calls against child labor originated from New England’s loss of business, jobs and capital.  Organized labor who also viewed child labor as a threat, denounced child labor to protect their own economic and political agendas.

Lastly, what is problematic of more recent labor and social activists and academics is their view of this period.  They often present child labor of a distant time period in a negative context, without accepting that this period had a different value system.  They pass judgement based on their modern morals over a time period that saw the inclusion of children in labor differently than now.  Historicism argues that the past should be understood on its own terms, rather than being judged by present-day values and standards. This means that historical events, figures, and cultures should be analyzed within the context of their own time, considering the social, political, and intellectual conditions that shaped them.  

[1] “Striking Gains in Child Labor Laws,” The Herland News, August 24, 1915, 7.  The herald and news. [volume] (Newberry S.C.) 1903-1937, August 24, 1915, Page SEVEN, Image 7 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress

[2] Phillip Holleran, “Family Income and Child Labor in Carolina Cotton Mills,” Social Science History, Autumn 1997, Vol. 21, No. 3, 298-299. 

[3] Edwin Markham, "The Hoe-Man in the Making: The Child at the Looms," Cosmopolitan. Vol. 61 (September 1906), 481.

[4] C.A. Finnegan, “Liars May Photograph: Image Vernaculars and Progressive Era Child Labor Rhetoric,” POROI 5(2) (November 2008), 94-95. https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1016

[5] George Dimock, “Children of the Mills: Re-Reading Lewis Hine’s Child-Labor Photographs,” Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1993) 46.  *Children of the Mills: Re-Reading Lewis Hine's Child-Labour Photographs

[6] Dimock, 47.

[7] Cathy L. McHugh, Mill Family: The Labor System in the Southern Cotton Textile Industry, 1880-1915, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 137.

[8] Elizabeth H. Davidson, “Early Development of Public Opinion Against Southern Child Labor,” North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 14, No. 3 (July 1937): 231.

[9] Davidson, 231.

[10] “Are Mills a Curse,” The Union Times, January 28, 1898, pp 4. The Union times. [volume] (Union, S.C.) 1894-1918, January 28, 1898, Image 4 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress 

[11] Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Robert Korstad, and James Leloudis, “Cotton Mill People: Work,

Community, and Protest in the Textile South, 1880-1940,” American Historical Review (April 1986): 282. Cotton Mill People: Work, Community, and Protest in the Textile South, 1880-1940 on JSTOR

[12] Hall, 248-249.

[13] Thomas Hudson Cartledge III, “Recollections: Life in South Carolina Mill Villages” (PhD diss., Clemson University, Clemson, 2019) ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (2343285961), 5-6. https://go.openathens.net/redirector/liberty.edu?url=https://www.proquest.com/pqdtglobal1/dissertations-theses/recollections-life-south-carolina-mill-villages/docview/2343285961/sem-2?accountid=12085

[14] Cartledge, 6.

[15] George Otis. Draper, Textile Texts. 2nd Edition. (Millford: Cook & Sons, 1903), 48.

[16] Draper, 48.

[17] Hearden, Patrick J, Independence and Empire: The New South’s Cotton Mill Campaign, 1865-

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[18] William Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry: or, An Inquiry into the Expedience of

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[19] Herbert Collins, “The Idea of Cotton Textile Industry in the South, 1870-1900,” North

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[20] Gregg, 38.

[21] Broadus Mitchell, Factory Master of the Old South. (Chapel Hill: The University of North

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[22] Beth English, A Common Thead: Labor, Politics and Capital Mobility in the Textile Industry, (Athens: The University of George Press, 2006), 9.

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[26] Cathy McHugh, 137.

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[30] Davidson, Early Development of Public Opinion Against Southern Child Labor, 232.

[31] “Child Labor,” Springfield Weekly, August 21, 1885, pp 2. Springfield weekly Republican. [volume] (Springfield, Mass.) 1851-1946, August 21, 1885, Page 2, Image 2 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress

[32] Davidson, Early Development of Public Opinion Against Southern Child Labor, 233.

[33] Davidson, 234.

[34] “Child Labor Law,” The Watchman and Southron, August 2, 1905, pp 1.

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[36] Shelley Sallee, The Whiteness of Child Labor Reform in the New South, (Athen: The University of George Press, 2004), 2-3. 

[37] “Child Labor Bill,” County Record, Kingstree, South Carolina, February 1, 1900, pp 9.

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[38] Dawley, Thomas R. The Child that Toileth Not, The Story of a Government Investigation that was Suppressed [sic].  New York City: Thomas R. Dawley, 1912, 4-6.

[39] David L. Carlton, Mill and Town in South Carolina, 1880-1920.  Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1982, 126n.

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[42] Holleran, Phillip, 297.

[43] Thomas Copeland, The Cotton Manufacturing Industry of the United States, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1912, 112.

[44] Schuman, 8.

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[46] Pastor David, “What Does the Bible Say About Idle Hands,” Christianity Path, accessed April 22, 2025.  What Does The Bible Say About Idle Hands (31 Verses Explained) - Christianity Path

[47] Schuman, 8.

[48] Copeland, 121-122.

[49] English, 7.

[50] Copeland, 112.

[51] English, 8.

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[53] English, 4.

[54] “Labor Conference Recommendations,” Springfield Republican, April 18, 1890, pp. 2. Springfield weekly Republican. [volume] (Springfield, Mass.) 1851-1946, April 18, 1890, Page 2, Image 2 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress

[55] Abbot, Edith. “A Study of the Early History of Child Labor in America.”  American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 14, No. 1 (July 1908): 15-37.  https://wwwjstor.org/stable/2762758

[56] Holleran, 298.

[57] Holleran, 299-300.

[58] Phillip Holleran, “Family Income and Child Labor in Carolina Cotton Mills,” Social Science History, Autumn 1997, Vol. 21, No. 3, 298-299. 

[59] Copeland, 117.

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[67] Copeland, 113.

[68] Davidson, Early Development of Public Opinion Against Southern Child Labor, 230.

[69] Herbert Collins, 390.

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[71] Herbert Collins, 391.

[72] English, 1.

[73] English, 3

[74] Augustus Kohn, The Cotton Mills of South Carolina, (Columbia: The News and Courier, 1907), 109. 

[75] “Interested in Child Labor Legislation,” Fort Mills Times, September 8th, 1910, 1. Fort Mill times. [volume] (Fort Mill, S.C.) 1892-current, September 08, 1910, Image 1 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress

[76] “Child Labor Law Revision,” The Heralds and News, December 20, 1910, pp 3.

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[77] D.A. Tompkins “Cotton Mill, Commercial Feature,”. Charlotte: D.A. Tompkins, 1899, 111-112.

[78] Lois MacDonald, "Southern Mill Hills, a Study of Social and Economic Forces in the Southern Mill Villages,” (PhD diss., New York University, New York, 1929) ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (301752443), 112-113. Southern Mill Hills, a Study of Social and Economic Forces in Certain Textile Mill Villages - ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global - ProQuest

[79] Elizabeth H. Davidson, “Early Development of Public Opinion Against Southern Child Labor.” North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 14, No. 3 July, 1937, 230

[80] Davidson, 231.

[81] Davidson, 231.

[82] Davidson, 233.

[83] Andrew Scott. Personal School Diary: 1925. Piedmont Mill and Village Collection, Piedmont Historical Preservation Society Archives, Piedmont, South Carolina, 1.

[84] James A. Hodges. New Deal Labor Policy and the Southern Cotton Textile Industry, 1933-1941.  (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1986), 31-32.

[85] Copeland, 117.

[86] Hodges, pp 39-40.